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I.
In the fall of 1977, they started going to night classes.
Armand had snuck in Daniel's room one night like a dream, sat on his legs with big amber eyes fixed on his form like headlights on soon-to-be roadkill and asked him, "What do you know about quarks?"
"Uh,” intelligently answers Daniel, having just been woken up from a once in a lifetime dreamless sleep, “the cheese?"
Armand looks successfully distracted for a fraction of a second, like this was new information he was filing away, ready for a follow-up in one of their sessions where he watched Daniel eat for hours. At least it was going to be something more edible than last time's concoction.
"No Daniel, the particles. They found a fifth one, there’s talk of solid evidence according to this article–" he excitedly whips out a stack of papers from a coat pocket. Daniel shivers in compassion of whichever poor library clerk had to print these out for him.
He gives it a quick read, half listening to Armand blabber on about scattering rates, baryons, accelerators. Nothing Daniel understood much, but damn he was hot when he got animated about something.
"I don't know, man. The last science class I took was back in high school, dissecting frogs for bio– do not get ideas," he adds when he thinks he sees a sparkle light up in his eyes. "Or do, you're the boss. Just don't bring them in my room, deal? The last guy stank up the place for a whole week."
A quick nod, focused. Then, "you are a journalist, Daniel. Can't you interview some of them? Ask them to tell us more about quarks?" He asks, his sharp fingernail pointing at the long list of authors under the paper's title.
Daniel barks a laugh. "Yeah, let me know in which Castro bar I can find them."
Any opportunity of going back to sleep forgotten, he moves to a sitting position, suddenly a few inches away from Armand's icy skin. He must have gone a few weeks without eating, he wishes he had come to him sooner. Daniel sways forward, turns his head on a side, the movements coming to him like second nature by now. "Look, you could start by asking around in college. See where that takes us, yeah? We can see if anyone knows these authors, refresh our memory on what an atom even is. They didn’t teach that in journalism school.”
And Daniel is fidgeting now, because he knows that Armand can read past the self-deprecating jokes, past the misdirecting. He knows that what is being beamed into Armand’s head right now sounds like first it was microwaves and telephones and blenders, and now this? Does he need this as a bucket-of-cold-water immersion into the modern age? Do vampires go through a mid-unlife crisis? The whiplash must be crazy, they split the atom, what, forty years ago? That’s minutes to a vampire.
Armand caresses his neck and sighs, considering, patient. "Beautiful boy, you worry too much. But alright, we will do it your way," he plunges his fangs in Daniel's jugular and that’s a sure-fire way to shut him up, so he does.
When they kiss, it tastes like citrus and copper. Armand is finally warm.
II.
The next night, uninvited– Daniel really hoped this one particular vampire myth to be true sometimes, to no avail– Armand shows up at his door earlier than usual, barely after sunset.
He's dressed like the perfect private school prick, because of course he researched for this new role, and he's holding a matching outfit that he pushes in Daniel's chest.
"We are going to college, put this on." It's not posed as a question so Daniel doesn't take it as one. He simply grabs the striped button-down that will undoubtedly fit him like a glove and laments another missed night of sleep.
"And what's wrong with what I'm wearing? I like these clothes," Daniel definitely doesn’t pout while saying it.
"Nothing at all. I just like to see my boy undress," Armand smiles bashfully like he hasn't just dropped a thousand tonnes worth of horniness on Daniel's shoulders then raises his chin, daring Daniel to contradict him.
Daniel strips slowly, exposing biceps, pecs, happy trail. He’s lanky in the way of kids who grew up tall too early, and the recent drugs and malnutrition certainly didn't help, but Armand seems to like his body well enough to watch him like a hawk whenever Daniel fucks their victims, so why not show off what he has.
Armand though is worse than a dog with a bone when he has his mind on a goal.
“Don’t tease, the course starts in half an hour. If you behave, you might be allowed to come on my tongue tonight."
Daniel grins. "Now we're talking," and with that he's out of the room.
At first, they sneak into one of San Francisco State University's physics classes. The teacher is good enough, but he keeps getting irritated the more Armand asks question that lie outside of his class's syllabus.
Then Armand's questioning (or, more accurately, his subsequent mind-gift use when he's not getting answers he likes) starts annoying the other students and when someone alerts the campus director they ultimately get kicked out. Apparently, mind-broken individuals are not the best physics teachers, don't ask Daniel how he knows that.
Before moving on, they decide to break into the college library past midnight and pitch camp around Dewey’s 530s. Or at least Daniel does, while Armand immediately climbs the ladder to the highest shelf and starts throwing down one book after another. It occurs to Daniel after the tenth tome he sidesteps that Armand is not playing a cruel game of dodgeball, he's reading and discarding every science book than the library has to offer. Daniel had seen him so frantic exactly once before, when he had found out that he could use Daniel's tapes to record the sounds of different bones being crushed by the garbage disposal and then meticulously catalogue them. Which, okay, the fact that Daniel stuck around after that says more about him than it does about Armand.
Daniel settles in a corner far away from the thrown books trajectory, reclines against a shelf using his messenger bag as a pillow and allows himself to just observe. Armand is quick and efficient, his movements progressively inhuman. He's reading like one would rip a band-aid off a nasty gash in the skin just to see it reopen, morbid curiosity mixed with surgical precision. Below him, an increasing trail of chaos.
He reached one of the lower rungs of the ladder now, still skimming the pages of almost every book. His breathing is laboured though– weird for a creature that doesn't even need lungs, so Daniel wonders if this might not entirely be the normal vampire reading process.
"What's the matter, Armand?"
Armand looks up, stunned, like he has just now noticed that Daniel is still in the room.
"It's not enough. 'Results are inconclusive', 'further research needed'," he quotes with a sneer. "It's not enough, Daniel."
"Ok, so we move on to the next library then."
"Daniel, they don't even agree with each other. Maxwell defined the rules then Einstein contradicted him, fine. Then this new model of quarks can't even handle gravity, let alone explain mass, or maybe it does," he lets a Physical Review issue drop to the ground, this time intentionally. "Is this what your modern world is about? Diatribes and inconclusive data?" he makes an all-encompassing gesture.
Daniel has never seen what baffled looks like on a vampire's face but this might be it.
"Well, yeah, maybe. Would that be so bad?"
Okay, yeah, that look on Armand's face is definitely baffled. And something else too that Armand is clearly struggling to communicate. So instead he jumps down the ladder and is on Daniel is a second, kneeling between his legs and holding his hands in an almost-too-tight grip. Then, images start flashing behind his eyes. Some of them feel familiar, dark alleyways, filthy cemeteries, frescoed palazzos, rough seas. How much of his story had Armand shared with him before, how much of it had he forcefully taken back? In them he finds all of Armand's previous identities jumbled together, connected by a tether with many names. Ancient customs, Great Laws. A flash forward to now, a broken line.
"Allow me this, Daniel..." he trails off, reconsiders. "To look for an undeniable truth."
Daniel's head is pounding, he is too sober for this. He fishes out a roach from the bottom of his jacket pocket and brings it to his lips, before remembering where they are and sighing.
Armand notices, turns off the smoke detector, lights up the blunt with the tip of his finger. And just like that, his marble-like frown melts again.
Daniel wants to scream let's find out who you are together, I want to see you. If the drugs don't take me in a few years maybe an illness will, maybe i'll be ran over by a car and drop down dead. All I want is to accompany you in whatever mad search for universal laws your heart desires.
But this is not the right moment to bring up his unresolved issues with mortality and vampirism so Daniel pushes them down, hoping Armand is still too frazzled to be looking into his mind. With a tight set to his jaw, he brings Armand to sit next to him, half hugging and half cradling him. Daniel can't help being relieved when Armand hugs him back.
"It's okay. It's okay, babe, we keep looking, okay? I'll help you, until I'm no longer allowed."
Armand makes a sound like he's been strangled but he nods, unsteady. He still doesn't let go of Daniel's side.
They let themselves be found like that, entangled in a heap of limbs, by the janitor’s comically aghast face in the early hours of the morning. They have to flee when he runs to call the cops on them but who cares, they weren't going to stay there anyway. Daniel even gets to paint a very classy ACAB graffiti on their way out.
III.
Daniel hears of one Nobel prize winning professor stationed at Caltech, so off to Pasadena they go. (His chief editor had asked him what this sudden interest in physics was about, but he had shrugged it off and muttered something about a new bomb against the commies, said he had a potential contact for an interview up there, and that was good enough to keep him quiet for a few days. How could he explain that he'd travel half the world if it meant spending more time with Armand, seeing him beam and excitedly tap his foot against Daniel's shin, his mouth hanging open in rare wonder? That Armand's blood made the best blow he ever tried pale in comparison, that his veins sing when he's flayed open and hanging onto existence only because Armand allows him to?)
Armand had told him that he would find a ride, and when he opens the door there he finds him, in front of a sleek black Cadillac Seville, and Daniel has to pick his jaw off the sidewalk.
"Holy shit man, which rich fuck did you kill for that?"
His only answer is a smug little smirk and to recline against the hood of the car Bond-villain like, all sharp angles and long legs. Surely nobody had the right to look that good. He twirls the keys in his hand in a move that he probably got from their latest Live and Let Die re-watch, except they slip from his grasp at the last second and he's only able to avoid them falling to the ground thanks to his vampire speed.
Daniel had to quickly get get used to boss's contradictions, so ridiculous one second and so frightening the next– both while being tremendously hot. Now, he huffs a tentative laugh, happy to see Armand in such a good mood. He would never have allowed Daniel to see that and live to remember it just a few years before.
They will never leave in time for sunrise if they get their way, so Daniel ignores the faint blush on Armand's cheeks and something uglier and jealous that claws its way out –he fed and not from me– in favor of slipping into the passenger seat.
He then immediately gets his payback (for laughing, for doubting) when Armand gets into the driver's seat and swiftly rests a clawed hand on Daniel's thigh. Daniel is pretty sure the tips of his ears are redder than the stoplight.
"They are."
"Get out of my head."
"Whatever you say, Daniel,"
Armand's eyes crinkle while slowly inching his hand up his leg. This was going to be a long drive.
IV.
The first night at Caltech goes smoothly. They find a free single-room apartment on campus, conveniently freed the same night they arrive on account of Armand draining the previous renter and depositing him in the storage closet. Daniel almost doesn't care that Armand won't share his blood when they fuck on their new bed except from allowing him to lick the traces he spilled when eating his dinner off his face. He can never resist the sight of Armand bloody, and he could swear he eats more messily just for Daniel when he's around.
Daniel falls asleep to the sound of Armand calling an external number to order a blackboard, his sour tangerine eyes the last thing Daniel sees before darkness takes him.
This professor, one Richard Feynman, looks promising for what Armand had in mind. The lecture hall is packed, the air filled with the chatter of the students around them. Daniel was amongst them not too long ago, he knows the weight brought to the class by a famous lecturer, the feeling of everyone hanging on their every word and moving to accomodate their big pompous asses and even bigger egos. He hopes this one will be better for Armand's sake.
They didn't even have to mind-trick anyone to get in given the conveniently open to the public evening lectures. Daniel just flashed his press card and they let them in, uninterested– and he can see why: sparse tape recorders fill the corners of the room in the hands of guys who don't seem to have the wildest clue about what they're doing in there except for the fact that their bosses asked them to go.
They sit all the way in the back, so as not to have to mingle too much with actual students, and also because the vampire eyesight allows Armand to see everything even this far away, the lucky fucker. Daniel squints, then focuses on the blank notepad in front of him. He'd better try to do his job that (barely) pays the bills while he's relieved of his Immortal's Babysitter and Chew Toy duties.
He zones out after that, except to scan any change in environment or in Armand's mood every once in a while. Armand, though, is still listening with rapt attention to this Feynman guy, and Daniel can't blame him– the guy seems to know what he's doing. He's magnetic, even managing to keep the focus of the out-of-place journalists. He holds himself in that way folks who know that they're charming do, with a sly smile that tricks the audience into believing you're in on a joke that nobody else will understand. Hell, looking at the formulas appearing and disappearing on the blackboard, that part is probably right.
After a while Armand leans in, his lips almost pressed against Daniel's ear but his eyes still firmly on the professor. “We need to get closer to him to ask more questions,” he whispers.
Daniel looks around the room. “It's packed here, he'll be swarmed. You think he would consider us even if I pulled the journalist card?”
Armand gives him a blank look in return.
"Nuh uh, no, that's not..." Daniel wiggles a finger at Armand’s head. "I didn't agree to that. Not to a famous guy like him, it’s too risky."
"Relax Daniel, I will let him go afterwards." Armand retreats into the face he pulls when he's rifling through someone's mind for information. "He'll just remember he had a bad LSD trip, that's all."
Daniel sighs, any more protests would be worthless. “Jesus, just…let me try to do my work first, alright? Convince him the old-fashioned way.”
Armand shrugs. “Maybe he won’t need any convincing at all. His old friend J. Robert let me watch Trinity detonate in 1945 on his own free will. Mr. Feynman was around too at the time, but he wouldn’t remember me, of course.”
Daniel opens his mouth, then closes it. The clapping and then the shuffling of bodies and paper around them signals the lecture is over.
“You were in– you know what, hold that thought for later. Let’s catch him before he leaves.”
As expected, a crowd quickly moves to surround Feynman. Before Daniel can even get out of his seat, something weird happens– all of the students start turning around, talking with others, ignoring the professor altogether; the journalists are fiddling with their machines, looking down. Most importantly, none of them is moving a muscle from their abs downward.
He narrows his eyes at Armand, whose face is looking too angelic to be truly innocent. You only told me not to touch the professor. I am fully following your instructions here, he tells Daniel in his head while approaching Mr. Feynman confidently. Then out loud, "you're going to teach me about quarks."
The man smirks while still looking down at his notes. "Hope I get to do so, it would mean you stuck around for the whole course. Are you enrolled, Mr...?"
"No. I mean now," Armand tilts his head, staring.
The man sizes him up, clearly having expected an adoring student and not a slightly menacing runway model looking guy who had seen one too many mafia movies. "I don’t take in any more grad students, you know, Mr. No."
Daniel shoulders forward to get between the two of them before it gets any more tense. "Hello Mr. Feynman I'm a journalist, my name's Daniel Molloy, it's an honor sir– my friend and I here are visiting and we would greatly appreciate if you could answer a few questions," he looks at Armand to see if he wants to add something, "about physics, that is. In private."
Armand simply continues to stare between Daniel and Feynman, weighting the pros and cons of leaning into the mind gift and how much plausible deniability he would have in this moment. Daniel's raised eyebrow probably silently answered 'none' for him, so he sighs and simply says, "follow us. Please."
The professor chuckles, looks between the two of them then to the people behind them, still whispering amongst themselves and comparing notes.
"Very well, lead the way. It's your lucky day, everyone else who might need me seems otherwise preoccupied. If this was your doing, you gotta teach me this trick, kids," he says jokingly.
"It might take a while," Armand says.
To Daniel’s surprise, and to the bewilderment of the crowd around them, he picks up his coat and follows them. By the time Armand's spell falls and everyone has regained control of their legs, the three of them are already out of the building.
V.
"...ok so, here's how you'd do it: if the path of stationary action is the only contribution to the total action, and in the relativistic case that is the Lagrangian written here..."
Daniel has been pacing in circles for an hour, the small space the dorm room offered taken over by the impromptu physics lesson. A few questions had become a few hundreds, the blackboard Armand had ordered had been filled with scribbles and still they kept going.
"...by an analogy with electrodynamics, we would say that this meson is the 'photon' of the nuclear force field, so to speak–"
Armand can't keep still either, he's bouncing on his heels and writing down everything maniacally. He probably looks high on uppers from an outsider's perspective, but then again there aren't many people this excited to get lectured on niche scientific discoveries for hours while under the influence, Daniel muses.
"...and this is where I got stuck. Does it work, professor?" Armand interjects.
Feynman looks at Daniel like Armand is saying the craziest joke and wants to check if he's in on it. "You're asking me if this new standard model works?"
Armand does a please, enlighten me gesture and the professor laughs.
"Sure, it works, for now, until something better comes along. It's incomplete, you've seen that.It's promising, i can tell you that, but who knows what the future will bring."
Armand is silent, so he continues. "Truth is kid, nobody understands it. I can explain it to you, get you a nice passing grade and a piece of paper with your name written on it saying you're one of the biggest experts on the matter. But that's just it, the students do not understand it either, and that's because I don't understand it. This is as far as we know for now, as far as we can know."
Armand scoffs. "You’re asking me to believe in something you don’t understand?"
His eyes are sparkling with mirth, he seems amused by this left turn in Armand's line of questioning.
"Not believe in, no, this is not a matter of faith. I’m asking you to question the theories people like me tell people like you every day, until you understand a bit more than the day prior, or until you find the theory no longer holds true."
Armand sits down for the first time in hours, his body collapsing suddenly. Daniel can see the gears turning in his head, mulling things over, the microexpressions behind the stoic mask.
It's gotten late, Feynman's wrist watch marks half past two. He does the middle aged dad motion of slapping his knees to signal his getting up to leave, but just before buttoning his coat he lingers. "Who even are you folks? What's the deal with two students in a single room asking for an urgent physics lesson?" His eyes are still smiling, there's no real heat behind the question.
Armand plucks and invisible piece of lint from his trousers. "I am a vampire, which means I am immortal. I was born before the age of Brahe and Kepler, therefore I was not accustomed to modern discoveries before just a short while ago." Meaning, before Daniel made him reconsider everything he ever knew.
Feynman's mind is used to postulates, ad absurdum, thought experiments, so he bounces back easier than most. "A vampire. Oh, funny, this is a new one, and you?" He looks at Daniel, maybe expecting him to say something equally out of the ordinary. Daniel just shakes his head.
"I'm just his..." bloodbag. lapdog. companion. "...his lover." as long as he'll have me.
He indulges them in what he must believe to be a shared fantasy of two drop-out losers. "Assuming what you told me is true, you'll live to see the end of the universe itself, be it a collapse or a heat death, right? You'll be the only person in this room, no, on Earth, to be able to get to see an answer to this. Why the rush! You'll have infinite chances to find what you're looking for in the next decades, centuries, if science will keep progressing at this rate. You'll be there either way," he shrugs. "Now excuse me, an old man has to catch his sleep."
Armand looks tentatively hopeful, as if he's trying not to be, fearful like a child with his sandcastle too close to the waves. His eyes are misted over with red, his hand now firmly planted in Daniel's. It had moved there during Feynman's speech, as if Armand needed an anchor against the prospect of complete, unabashed freedom- too terrifying to face alone, too intoxicating to bear without sharing.
And Daniel doesn't dare remove his hand, but he also can't stop his traitorous roving mind from blasting I need to be there with you. Don't let me go out before you do, or before the universe ends. They're the same thing to me anyway. And the thought surprises him, because not even 36 hours before he was in a seedy nightclub buying unlabeled pills from a seedy guy, and isn't that such a funny and distant idea now. (Nothing could ever come close to the high from Armand's blood anyway, no matter how hard he tried).
Armand looks wrecked, he knows Daniel is right and hates him for it.
He snaps his fingers. "Thank you, professor, you have been of great help. You're dismissed." Feynman's eyes become blank and he silently leaves the room.
VI.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
Armand shushes him. "My reckless Daniel, my beloved, my novel wonderful boy. Don't worry."
Daniel is shaking his head, he knows how this is going to go now. He fucked up, and he's going to wake up in a place he doesn't recognize, blaming the gap in his memories on drugs, rinse and repeat until the next time Armand misses him and decides to pay him a visit.
"Okay lover, okay," he's gently caressing Daniel's face. "Rest now, your memories will be there when you wake up, even if i will not."
That doesn't calm Daniel down but instead only makes him panic further. "No, don't leave me either, please," He grabs Armand's shirt, shivering. "Turn me, I know you want it too. To face all of it together."
"I'm so sorry, beloved. That is the one universal rule I cannot bend, nor do I wish to."
Daniel thinks he can see a blood red tear in the corner of Armand's eye, he can feel his cold lips press on the crown of his head. He can hear, faintly, a whispered "not yet," then everything goes black and he's dead to the world.
Armand tucks Daniel into bed, then slips enough money for his return trip in his jacket pocket.
In a day, Daniel will wake up and remember just enough to write his article down before he has a chance to forget in the old-natured human way. He will get paid, go back to his usual life and all the risks it entails. Armand will be there, days, months, years from now, to clean up his tracks and burn up papers if needed, and to edit himself out of the picture: no observers should interfere in this delicate process, just like for subatomic particles. Armand can't risk this experiment's success.
And most of all, Daniel will live. Whatever it costs, he will grow old and live a full mortal life. In the meantime Armand can manage, that's what he always did for all his life. Most importantly, now he has something to look forward to.